Self-taught artist and influential memoirist Francis Bicknell Carpenter is probably more responsible for conceiving and recording both the public and private images of Abraham Lincoln than anyone of his time. His personal account of the Lincoln White House, which he witnessed while painting the First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, was first published in 1866. For this new illustrated and indexed volume, the White House Historical Association has reset the original text, preserving typographical errors as they were, without comment. An introduction by Lincoln historian Harold Holzer has also been added.